I have a small addiction. I create people and tell them what to do. I create the same people over and over again, and watch them act out the plans I have made for them. They are always thin, attractive, rich, and have great furniture. Their houses stay clean from the maid, and a job promotion is just a skill bar away. Their children never miss a homework assignment. Their gardens never go untended, and their love life is unbelievable. I feel organized when I play The Sims.

Marcella Lockston is the pop star of Calpurnia Heights. I worked her way up from a gas station attendant to the spiked haired, spandex wearing, serial dating rocker that she is today. Her boyfriends are many, her obligations few; one dog (Biscuit), and of course, her booming career. She started out like the rest; a template. I chose the lazy, half closed eyes, and the jet black hair to contrast her milky skin, dressed her in brown boots, cut shorts, and a white tank top.

My room is tidy. I know where most things are. The extra pens in the desk drawer, the body lotion under the bed, and even the most obscure of items, like thank you cards, I know where those are too; top shelf of closet to the left in picture box labeled “childhood photos.” I know that when my boyfriend sleeps over and leaves his toothbrush in the shower that I have to take a deep breath and handle it until he leaves. The status of my room is in my hands. The comfort of neatness makes me happy. I play the Sims best when my room is clean.

Marcella has no write up in the game, but I know that she eventually wants a family. She wants to be a single mother, not held down by one of the many men that she dates. Her daughter will be named something outrageous, like Radiator, or Fleece. Her career will reach the top, and then slowly dwindle because she wants it to, because I will make her have twelve children, if the game doesn’t lock up first (which it often does). She will adopt, she will play the guitar, and she will finally fall in love with the cleaning man, who has been there in the background her whole life and took her this long to notice. I will wrap her life up into a simple story; a pink ribbon ending.

I never thought I would have a planner. I always thought I wouldn’t want to be bogged down by plans; that I could frolic around and bump into people and places and spontaneously become fabulous. I have sadly learned that this is impossible. I can’t even tell my boyfriend if I’m available for Saturday if I don’t have my planner in my hand, not because I’m tremendously busy, but because I don’t remember. Sometimes, I study the planner for twenty minutes at a time. I sit in a desk or on a sofa and go over each event, assignment, teeth cleaning, TV program, or car payment schedule. Somehow reading it, memorizing it even, makes me think I will accomplish them without difficulty, that I won’t forget or I’ll do the assignment ahead of time, or I’ll diminish all of my debt because I wrote it down.

Mr. and Mrs. Stewart have three children, two large golden retrievers, and a vegetable garden. Mr. Stewart is in charge of the test research lab in Calpurnia Heights. Mrs. Stewart is a stay at home mom who has an affair with Mr. Andy Howard a block down every afternoon after the children have hurried off to school. Every day I try to make Mrs. Stewart paint, either before or after her “lunch” with Andy. It’s good for her; she needs to expand her horizons. She’s never had a job, and she doesn’t go out much, and before Mr. Stewart finds out about Andy and leaves her for good, alone with the children, she should have a profitable craft of some sort to support her family.

I want to live without plans. I hate it when someone gives me a “remember the date” or makes weekend plans that must include me. I love going; I hate planning. If I think about all the written events in my planner, and realize that I have no weekends, I’ll just cry. Or more realistically, I’ll clean. I’ll make my bed, straighten the comforter until it looks like I haven’t slept in it for days, dust the dresser, clean the toilet bowl, and re-stack my books. I may not have a weekend, but I have a clean room.

The Sims releases the same obsessive-compulsive satisfaction that I get when I clean my room. I don’t feel productive when I play the game, however. I pause my own life and progress Mrs. Stewart’s, Marcella’s, and the Howard girls’. But it’s the same tidying away of loose pens, good, the girls did their homework, of vacuuming the floor, excellent Mr. Stewart got a promotion, of putting a clean duvet on the comforter, very nice work on that last painting Mrs. Stewart. I know where they are, how they are arranged, and what they are going to be doing tomorrow.

There are three speed levels to the game, regular (slow), medium (slightly sped up), and high (lightning). I play the game mostly on high. I watch them make pancakes, clean the bathroom, garden some tomatoes, call the kids and husband for breakfast, and watch them eat in less than 30 seconds (our time). If something gets out of hand, simply slow down. That’s part of The Sims beauty, slowing down on command. If, for instance, in real life someone caught on fire, one would not be able to briefly stop time and grab a fire extinguisher or run upstairs to the telephone without fear of being too late. In the Sims, this is possible. If a Sim catches on fire, pause the game, tell another one to grab the phone and call the fire department. And what if there isn’t another Sim, you ask? Exit the game and start over. You may have regressed back a skill point or two, but at least they aren’t dead.

It was recently when I had just cleaned my room. The bed was made, all the pens, clothes, toothbrushes, and slippers were in their assigned areas and I was ready to play. I clicked into Calpurnia Heights, and searched for the Stewart residence. Their house was gone. I retraced my game from last night, remembering that I built their house from ground up with the carpet, wall, and paint tools. Where was their house?! I started a slight panic as I went over each Sims house, I moved the pointer from the Greber’s to the Kilhent’s to Marcella’s place and I still couldn’t find their house. The program deleted my house. THE PROGRAM DELETED MY HOUSE.

This has only happened one other time in Sims history. Poor Mr. and Mrs. Ishmay, they had two daughters and lucrative careers. I was looking forward to getting those girls married, but my computer crashed right in the middle of my game, and I lost them forever. It’s too frustrating to create them again, and it just wouldn’t be the same. I had to move on.

I frequently save my games because something bad could happen at any moment. I went downstairs for a muffin one day, and both my Sims were burned to death. They forget to take things out of the oven sometimes, and when you don’t put a fire alarm on the wall, the firemen don’t come, and there go your Sims. So now, I save. If I don’t like what happens, I exit into the neighborhood, and re-enter their house from the last save point, and everything is back to normal. Mr. Stewart has caught Mrs. Stewart numerous times with Andy, but he doesn’t know it.

I used to be cruel. Before the saving ritual, I used to drown them. The first version of the game only allowed children to grow up until about 10 years old. They stayed that way … forever. They didn’t become teenagers, and they didn’t become adults, so if you decided to have kids, you had kids until, well … you killed them. The only way to assure death in the game (besides leaving them without a fire alarm, which could take “months”) is to get them very tired, and make them go swimming, then take away the ladder. I know, try not to judge. I really wouldn’t drown actual children; they grow up. Why would you make a game where the kids didn’t grow up? What other choice did they leave me? I had to do something. They were just eating the food, and hanging around, and doing homework all the time for no reason. They were trapped in middle school, how awful. I freed them, really, and it created a happier game, for them and for me. The next version allowed teenagers and adults. Drowning doesn’t really occur anymore.

Sometimes I’m afraid that I will treat the people in my life like I do Marcella, or my room, that I will trap them into one of the lined spaces in my planner. That I will tidy them under my bed or in a drawer and expect them to be there doing whatever I had them doing when I left. I don’t want to control my boyfriend, which is why is so very vital to shut my mouth about the toothbrush, even though when I take a shower it makes my skin crawl to think that shower and body wash items have made their way into his bristles, and that when he asks me where his toothbrush is, I don’t shriek back, “YOU PUT IT IN THE SHOWER, STUPID!” It’s important to keep the controlling within Calpurnia Heights.

Angela is a successful writer residing in Calpurnia Heights. She lives there with her fiancé Jesse, the famous filmmaker of Evergreen Fields. They have a large cottage, two cats, and an expensive fruit juicer. Angela wants children one day, but feels that her career is more important right now. Her house is cleaned by Martha the maid, and her days are mostly spent writing. Maybe she will buy a beach house in the town over, maybe she will raise a few children and love them even more than writing and maybe, she will find that one day, The Sims will become just a silly game that she can play whenever she wants to have some fun, instead of trying to get control of her life in the small ways that she can.

ANGELA SPARANDERA
ASSISTANT EDITOR